The invention relates generally to processing guides used in cooperation with hand-held power tools, and more specifically to a cross-cut guide for a hand-held circular saw.
Home construction in the United States produces an enormous range of house styles that include an enormous range of finishing styles. Even so, it is true that a huge majority of these homes are built using completely standardized building practices. Partially this is because building codes across the United States are mostly uniform, and also because the use of standard building practices permit reliable housing to be quickly constructed at a lower cost than would be the case without the standardization. The construction sequence, especially of a brand new home, typically includes most the following steps: grading/site preparation, foundation construction, framing, window/door installation, roofing, siding, rough electrical, rough plumbing, rough HVAC, insulation, drywall, underlayment, trim, painting, finish electrical, bathroom/kitchen counters/cabinets, finish plumbing, carpet and flooring, finish HVAC, water main/well drilling, sewer hookup/septic installation, and a punch list.
Construction framing, particularly for human-occupied buildings, commonly uses wooden framing materials also called boards, such as 2×4s (1.5″ by 3.5″) and 2×10s (1.5″ by 9.5″) that come in many lengths but each are usually at least about 8 feet long. The boards are purchased too long for most uses and they must be individually cut to size. The framing of the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the roof require that a carpenter individually cut many boards to exact size. The preferred method is to have the boards cut on location to the precise length. For speed and efficiency, each board is individually measured using a tape measure to mark the cut location. The carpenter then holds the board in one hand and makes a cross-cut using a hand-held circular saw (e.g., a Skillsaw circular saw). The carpenter must try to maintain a right-angle during the cut while holding the board and operating the saw. Results can vary considerably in maintaining a right-angle cut at the desired location for a single board, much less hundreds of boards.
One solution employed by many construction framing crews is the use of a square that is used to mark a right-angle across the board at the correct location, with the line providing a visual guide to the carpenter during the cut. This improves the right angle cuts but it requires use of another tool and is therefore slower. Also the line for the cut is not constrained to the visual cue, thus the conformance of the final cut to the desired angle is not always as close as the carpenter would like.
It is therefore desirable to provide a solution that permits a carpenter to make exact, on-the-spot time-efficient cross-cuts of their boards while holding the board in one-hand and the circular saw in the other hand.